Tactless
by vader-incarnate
Summary: After Luke gets his heart broken again, Mara tries her hand at the whole hurtcomfort thing. Except, as it turns out, she's not very good at it. At all. [PreVotF LM Humor]


TITLE: "Tactless"

AUTHOR: VaderIncarnate

CONTENT: Humor. Luke/Mara interaction, Luke/Other implied, a bit of a spoof on the hurt/comfort genre in general. (Choose your favorite Lukie love; I don't do EU goodly.) Something of a parody on the whole hurt/comfort genre in general.

**STANDARD DISCLAIMER**: I don't own it, I never will, please don't sue -- I'm doing this to keep my plot bunnies at bay.

SUMMARY: After Luke gets his heart broken again, Mara tries her hand at the whole hurt-comfort thing. Except, as it turns out, she's not very good at it. At all.

* * *

"At least there's no gravesite." 

"Uh-huh," he grunted somewhat peevishly. He'd become so used to just nodding his head in response to the platitudes that he answered, really, without really hearing what she said.

It was always the same sort of thing anyway -- regrets, condolences, pity -- _I'm so sorry, Luke_ from those who knew him well enough, or from the pompous Coruscrats, _We're offer our sincerest condolences for your loss and we regret_ --

And right about then his brain caught up to his mouth.

"What?" he demanded, head snapping up from his contemplation of the table.

The word came out before he could check it. Because he'd heard what she'd said -- he just couldn't believe she'd said it.

"I said, 'At least there's no gravesite,'" she responded easily enough, though she didn't look up from her cup of hot chocolate. She was studying it rather intently -- had, in fact, been studying it intently for the past ten minutes or so. Now she held it up to eye-level, carefully squinting at the pattern on its edge. "Is this a Nubian design?"

He blinked. "No gravesite?" he repeated, more curious than upset at this point.

She looked at him, green eyes flashing with a bit of irritation. "You know," she snapped, "no gravesite. They're depressing things, gravesites. You have to go and visit them, take care of them, leave flowers and the like. Cemeteries can have their own sort of beauty, but only when no one you know is buried there, don't you think?"

He didn't respond. Mara wasn't ... Mara wasn't talking about _that_, was she? Because Mara just didn't talk about _that_, not since her ship had landed on Yavin for stars only knew what. Everyone else might, but Mara just didn't _talk_ about that, not with sympathy, not with hate, not at all.

"So you don't need a grave to feel close to her."

He stood up so quickly that he knocked his chair over, nearly making her spill her cup of hot chocolate as well.

She glared. "Watch it, Skywalker!"

"Excuse me," he muttered, bending down as much to straighten the chair as to hide his own sudden flush of anger. She might not possess a single redeeming social grace, but Luke's manners were ingrained, even when the recipient didn't deserve them.

He dashed out of the room.

* * *

"No body, either." 

"What?" This time he meant it. _What_ had she said?

They were in the kitchen again. All had been quiet for the past few minutes, despite his worries. He had just about decided that the last outburst was some strange fluke -- the galaxy screwing with his mind just a bit more for the kick of it -- when she'd spoken up.

"Well, you know." She hesitated. Not looking at him, he noted -- her gaze was fixed on the cup, again. "Most people who grieve say that it's worse when there's no body. But think about it -- you don't have to worry about what you're going to do with it. Burial or cremation ... no question about whether or not you need an autopsy to be done ..."

He fled. No "excuse me" this time, Aunt Beru's ingrained teachings about politeness notwithstanding.

"And you won't have to think about the rotting," she called after him.

* * *

He didn't go into the kitchen anymore -- too risky, with Mara seemingly just about everywhere. But he couldn't leave the Temple altogether, and though the Temple was big, it wasn't _that_ big. Which was how she managed to catch him in the hallway, three nights later. 

"You'll never have to worry about her leaving you for someone else."

No _what_ this time. He just stared.

"It's the usual end to relationships. They don't last -- this way, you'll never have to see her on the street with someone else, laughing and in love with a person who isn't you, while you seethe and wither."

Afterwards, he was always quite proud of the control he exhibited -- he didn't bite his own tongue off. "Get. Out. Of. My. Way."

She blinked, stepping aside. As he pushed past, he thought that she looked almost surprised.

* * *

"Have you thought about what this will mean for your next relationship?" 

It was a close call, but he managed to avoid either banging his head on the cabinet or choking on his own toothpaste. Because she had pushed open the 'fresher door. While he was in it.

He was wearing a towel.

"Nrrth!" was all he could manage with a mouth full of toothpaste.

"While someone new might worry that she'd never measure up to your lost love," she continued, oblivious to his trauma, "she'll never have to worry that you'll go back to the last lover. That's reassuring, for a new romantic episode."

"OUT!" he roared, not bothering to spit first.

* * *

He'd called Leia as soon as he'd finished in the 'fresher, hoping she had something for him to do -- anything, so long as it was far from Mara Jade. New Imperial super-weapon, hostile alien species attacking the Republic, long-dead Sith Lord that needed re-slaying ... at this point, he was quite willing to settle for a Ewok stuck in a tree. 

The one time he was hoping for a crisis was the one time that the galaxy didn't deliver.

Nevertheless, he was working on his X-Wing the next morning, with a vague sort of hope that something would happen and he'd be off flying into the starry sky, away from green-eyed redheads with less than no tact at all.

There was a certain pleasure in working on his X-Wing -- getting his hands dirty, fixing this, tweaking that. It almost made him remember, again, why he liked this sort of thing so much -- dashing across the galaxy chasing after one thing or another. Strange that he couldn't find solace in his own home if nowhere else, though. Of course, there _was_ a certain person to blame for that --

He heard someone behind him and turned around.

Mara was watching him, leaning nonchalantly against a wall just a few feet away.

"You'll never have to watch her grow old or infirm."

He felt everything recede. Everything but Mara, who _wouldn't_ recede, _wouldn't_ go away, who sat in the center of his field of vision like a target that needed to be dismembered in the messiest way possible.

Shaking with the effort of keeping his hand away from his lightsaber, he turned, dropped the hydrospanner, and walked away.

* * *

He was proud, later, that he retained enough presence of mind to ask the children to leave in a somewhat reasonable tone of voice. The Jedi Master portion of his brain won _that_ victory, at least, over the not-so-reasonable farmboy. 

Tionne blinked but wisely said nothing as she herded the students away, leaving Master Skywalker to handle his own personal crises.

Mara and Luke stared at one another in mutual silence. Yavin's jungle was relatively quiet -- as quiet as a jungle could be, any way -- as if in anticipation of their confrontation. He had _thought_ he'd managed to escape the redhead for at least a few hours before her unanticipated arrival during the student training session.

As far as he was concerned, she was just lucky they hadn't progressed to lightsabers yet.

Mara spoke first. "I was --"

He didn't give her a chance to get further than that. Since it wasn't his lightsaber he wanted to use anyway, he shoved the Jedi Master aside for the moment and let the human being to the forefront -- he seized her by the forearms, feeling the muscles in her arm tense but keeping his grip nonetheless. And maybe he was being his father's son, but at that point he didn't really care.

"You spiteful little witch," he hissed, emphasizing his words with a little shake. Alarm bells were going off in his head -- _what would Aunt Beru say?_ some distant corner of his mind was wondering -- but he ignored them for the moment. "She's gone, do you understand that? I don't give a damn how much you approved or disapproved, how you didn't think she was right for me, how the hell you told me so, I _don't give a damn_!"

He had her up against a tree trunk before he realized that she wasn't fighting back. He blinked a few times, bewildered through the anger -- Mara didn't take _anything_ without fighting back.

An emerald glower, a disdainful toss of red hair, and a few quick jabs of a graceful hand. All of a sudden, he wasn't grabbing anything anymore but gingerly rubbing at his wrist.

They kept glaring.

But, to his surprise, Mara was the one who deflated first, eyes dropping to the ground and shoulders slumping as much as they ever did -- which is to say not very much at all.

"I -- I was trying to make you feel _better_, Skywalker," she snarled at her feet.

He stopped, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. After mentally reviewing this statement several times, he closed his mouth with an audible click. "Better," he repeated slowly. "Better."

"Better," she affirmed. You know, I thought --" she stopped, scowling, and tossed her hair back in embarrassed irritation. "Well, I thought," she snapped.

It was his turn to be left blinking. "Mara," he said slowly, wonderingly. "You're the most tactless person in the galaxy, did you know that?"

She shrugged, looking rather uncomfortable. "I was trying to comfort you," she grumbled, uncharacteristically not meeting his eyes.

"You thought that was _comfort_?"

She scowled. "I haven't had much practice."

"I noticed," he snapped. "The last thing I want to hear is how I'm better off without her."

Green eyes flickered in what might have been either amusement or embarrassment. "Yeah, I guess that was my general theme."

"Listening would have been fine. Companionable distraction would have been good. Comfort sex would have been great." He sat down wearily, burying his face in his hands. "Stars," he muttered.

She sat down next to him, hesitating a bit before gingerly draping an arm over his shoulder. "So," she began, studying the position of her arms with the same intensity she usually reserved for studying datapads. "I don't think I'm supposed to pat you on the back or anything, am I? Is this okay, Skywalker?"

"Yeah, I guess," he grumbled, voice a bit muffled from behind his fingers. "Though I think I'm all comforted-out at the moment."

"Well, think of it as credit for next time."

He glanced up from his fingers. "Next time?" he groaned. "You're looking forward to a _next_ time?"

"There's always a next time," she shrugged, waving her other hand vaguely. "I'll be here to comfort you through all of them, promise, just in case you need me to beat someone up for you, farmboy."

He blinked. "You know," he said, slowly shaking his head and with the beginnings of a smile growing on his lips, "I'm not really sure if that thought is comforting or just scary."

"I'll remember that," she assured him, smirking.

They sat in silence for a while, thinking their own thoughts. The forest was peaceful and quiet, the Temple far enough away that the sounds of the Jedi Academy were scarcely more than whispers upon the wind -- all in all, he felt at peace, for the first time in a long time. Probably because he didn't have to worry about dodging Mara Jade anymore, but maybe something else as well.

It came as no surprise to either of them when Mara broke the silence once more.

"You weren't serious about the comfort sex were you, Skywalker? Because I think this whole comforting-thing might have to stop if you expect to get _there_."

Finis****


End file.
